Focus Middle Tennessee’s 2018 Candidate Survey Results

In June, we invited every candidate in the Middle Tennessee area (certified per Ballotpedia) running for TN Governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, TN Senate, and TN House to participate in the survey. We wanted to give them a chance to answer questions about LGBT+ equality issues. We invited the 200 candidates and had 34 responses with one candidate running for two offices. We sincerely thank all of the candidates and/or their representatives who took the time to participate in the survey. Once the primaries are completed after the August 2, 2018 elections, we will update this listing with the primary winners who are moving on to the general election on November 6, 2018. For more information on the survey, click here. For important election dates and Tennessee voter information, click here.

Focus magazine does not endorse any political candidate. We do encourage all citizens to exercise their right to vote and be heard.

PLEASE READ:

For Middle Tennessee Candidates who responded to the survey in any way, a pdf of their response is posted via link below.

• a candidate may have given yes/no answers only• a candidate may have given yes/no answers plus comments about their answer• a candidate may have given only their name and office for which they’re running and skipped the policy questions

If a candidate did any one of these, the pdf of their individual response is below.

For candidates who did not respond to the survey invitation, there is no survey report. If any of your candidates did not respond, contact them directly for information on their stances.

A note about Q26 – “Do you believe the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (Public Law No: 103-141) gives for-profit businesses the right to refuse service to LGBT+ individuals?”. After further review Focus Middle Tennessee decided there was a discrepancy with how this question might be viewed from a true legal standpoint vs how the law should be interpreted. In the interest of fairness to all candidates, we opted to omit this question from the survey results.